Minding my business

Remember back when William Clinton was caught with a cigar in his intern?  So many of us sighed, pushed back our hair, and said, “Who the hell cares?  It’s not our goddamned business, as long as he is doing his job well.  He can stick whatever he likes wherever he likes as long as it is between consenting adults.”

Lately, the reaction to these semi-annual Politician Mistress Scandals has been to sort of shrug and forgive.  It may affect the transgressor in the moment, but many elected officials with straying organs of manliness have gone on to have lovely careers.  We just don’t care that much, unless the politician disappears for a few days to fly to another country for his booty call, which sort of offends our “Buy American” sensibilities.

And, we shouldn’t care.  Yes, Clinton crossed a line because Lewinsky was barely out of diapers and he was abusing power.  OK, got it. And Sanford?  It makes for an excellent story, but the sex is beside the point – it is his fondness for completely disappearing that ought to bother people.  All the guys in between?  Whatever.  Their wives should be pissed.  The rest of us ought to have better things to do with our time.

It just doesn’t matter who someone is screwing, people, as long as he or she is not allowing that to affect his or her job.  (I throw the feminine pronoun in there, but we ALL know that the female politicians are really not at issue here.)  Non-consensual?  Children?  That’s a problem.  Otherwise, it seem to be a colossal waste of time to start poking around in other people’s sex lives.

In the case of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” is also a national security risk.  The policy of kicking qualified people out of the military for simply humping those of the same sex means we are emptying the military of qualified people at a time when military recruiting is not exactly at its high point.

Lt. Daniel Choi is a freaking linguist, for heaven’s sake.  He speaks Arabic.  He went to West Point.  He deployed to Iraq.  Hello, people – this is just the guy we want to keep in the military.  Why in the world would we care who he sleeps with if he is willing to put his life on the line in order to protect our children?

Do I think homosexuality is immoral?  No, I don’t.  I am a big fan of love in all its forms.  But, it really doesn’t matter what I think; as long as no one was coerced, I should mind my own f-ing business.  And I think that my government firing competent members of the military for no good reason is definitely my business.

In 1998, we learned that the Commander in Chief had cheated on his wife in the Oval Office and we got over it because, hey, it was immoral, but it was not illegal.  It is eleven years later.  By this point, we should have learned that it is not up to us to judge other people’s morality. 

So, on this Fourth of July, I would like to thank all those members of the armed forces who are there, working to protect my family, even though it means the military gets all up in their personal lives.

This is an original post for LA Moms Blog.  She also blogs at Wheels on the Bus and Edge of the Page.